THE OPERATIVE: “IT’S WORSE THAN YOU KNOW.”
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: “It usually is.”
Mal usually gets it right:
This is truly bananas: all of Europe appears to have been seconds away a continent-wide blackout.
The grid frequency across continental Europe plunged to 49.85 hertz — just a hair above the red-line collapse threshold.
The normal operating frequency for Europe’s power grid… https://t.co/5qyZLpammm pic.twitter.com/83eCl5B1Ux
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) April 28, 2025
Full text:
This is truly bananas: all of Europe appears to have been seconds away a continent-wide blackout.
The grid frequency across continental Europe plunged to 49.85 hertz — just a hair above the red-line collapse threshold.
The normal operating frequency for Europe’s power grid is 50.00 Hz, kept with an extremely tight margin of ±0.1 Hz. Anything outside ±0.2 Hz triggers major emergency actions.
If the frequency had fallen just another 0.3 Hz — below 49.5 Hz — Europe could have suffered a system-wide cascading blackout.
At that threshold, automatic protective relays disconnect major power plants, and collapse accelerates.
And it’s disturbingly easy to imagine multiple scenarios where that could have occurred…
Previously: The Power Is (Literally) Going Out All Over Europe.